Dead Space, Real Income: Earning from Unused Property in the Philippines | Leeveit

The Slump Nobody Wanted to Talk About

When Leeveit Founder and CEO Joey Consenheim sat down with Michelle Ong on ABS-CBN’s Market Edge, the conversation started where most honest conversations about Philippine real estate have to start right now: the slump.

Vacancy rates are climbing. Office absorption has slowed. Residential inventory is sitting longer than developers would like. If you own property in Metro Manila, you’ve probably felt it – the sense that the market you counted on is shifting beneath your feet.

But here’s what didn’t make the headline: not all property is struggling equally.

While traditional real estate faces headwinds, a quieter category is holding its ground – and in some cases, growing. Flexible storage, parking, and underutilized commercial spaces are proving resilient in ways that are worth paying attention to.

This isn’t a feel-good story. It’s a structural shift. And if you own space that isn’t earning what it should, it matters to you directly.

What’s Happening to Philippine Real Estate

To understand the opportunity, you first have to understand the pressure.

The Philippine property market is navigating a confluence of challenges that didn’t arrive overnight. The post-pandemic office recovery has been slower and more uneven than most forecasts predicted. Remote and hybrid work arrangements have permanently reduced the amount of office space many companies are willing to commit to. Long-term leases – once the backbone of commercial real estate revenue – are being renegotiated, downsized, or simply not renewed.

On the residential side, the picture is similarly complicated. Condo supply in Metro Manila outpaced demand during the pre-pandemic building boom, and the correction has been gradual but visible. Prices in some segments have softened. Rental yields that once looked attractive are being squeezed by higher carrying costs and longer vacancy periods.

The POGO exodus didn’t help. The departure of Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators left behind a significant volume of commercial and residential space – particularly in BGC, Ortigas, and the Bay Area – that the market is still absorbing. (Source: Colliers Philippines Market Reports)

And underneath all of this is a more fundamental reality: the era of simply buying property, waiting, and expecting appreciation to do the work is becoming harder to rely on.

Property owners today need their assets to work harder. The question is how.

The Hidden Cost of Underutilized Space

Here’s something that rarely gets discussed directly: idle space isn’t neutral. It costs you.

Every square meter of unused storage room, empty parking bay, or vacant mezzanine level is generating zero income while accumulating carrying costs – association dues, property taxes, utilities, maintenance, insurance. In a high-rise condo in Makati, that unused storage unit might be costing its owner PHP 3,000 to PHP 6,000 a month in fees while sitting empty. Multiply that across a building with dozens of unused slots, and the number becomes significant quickly.

For warehouse and commercial property owners, the math is even more stark. A 500-square-meter space sitting vacant at PHP 300 per sqm per month is PHP 150,000 in lost revenue – every single month. That’s not a paper loss. That’s real cash that isn’t coming in while real expenses keep going out.

But the cost isn’t only financial. Underutilized space has an operational cost too. It attracts clutter, deferred maintenance, and in some cases, security concerns. A neglected space compounds its own problems.

The instinct for many property owners is to wait – to hold out for the right long-term tenant at the right price. And sometimes that’s the right call. But in a slower market, waiting has a price tag. The question worth asking is whether there’s a smarter way to bridge the gap.

“Dead Space” What They Look Like?

The term “dead space” sounds like an exaggeration. It isn’t.

Walk through almost any mid-size commercial building in Metro Manila and you’ll find them: basement levels used as informal dumping grounds, mezzanine floors that were never built out, podium parking decks with entire sections blocked off, back-of-house areas that serve no active function. In residential towers, it’s storage cages that were never sold, utility rooms that exceed what the building actually needs, and roof deck areas that sit unused outside of the occasional event.

These aren’t architectural failures. They’re revenue failures.

Consider what some of these spaces can realistically become with minimal intervention:

• An unused basement storage area in a Quezon City commercial building becomes a climate-accessible self-storage hub for small business owners storing excess inventory between peak seasons.
• A vacant mezzanine level in a Pasig warehouse becomes a dedicated overflow space for an e-commerce brand that needs flexible capacity during 11.11 and 12.12 without committing to a full warehouse lease.
• Three unused parking slots in a BGC condo tower become monthly-lease parking for professionals working in the area who can’t secure building access elsewhere.
• A back-of-house room in a Makati office building becomes document storage for a law firm downsizing its physical footprint.
  

None of these transformations require major capital expenditure. They require a different way of thinking about what a space can do and the right platform to connect supply with demand.

The spaces already exist. The demand already exists. The gap is the connection between them.

How Flexible Leasing Models Work

For property owners unfamiliar with the model, flexible leasing can sound complicated. It isn’t.

The core idea is straightforward: instead of committing a space to a single long-term tenant at a fixed rate, you make it available on shorter, more adaptable terms – monthly, quarterly, or on a rolling basis. The renter gets flexibility. You get occupancy and income, even if the terms are shorter than a traditional lease.

In practice, this looks different depending on the space and the use case.

For storage spaces, it typically means listing the space with clear specifications – dimensions, accessibility, security features, climate conditions – and setting a monthly rate that reflects the market. Renters search, compare, and book based on their specific needs. The transaction is clean, the terms are defined, and the relationship is managed through a platform rather than through lawyers and lengthy negotiations.

For parking slots, the model is even simpler. A slot is listed with its location, access hours, and monthly rate. A renter books it. The owner receives payment. There’s no complex fit-out, no tenant improvement allowance, no months of negotiation.

For larger commercial or warehouse spaces, flexible leasing might mean offering shorter initial lease terms – three to six months rather than two to three years – with renewal options. This lowers the barrier for smaller businesses and online sellers who need real space but can’t justify long commitments.

What makes this model work at scale is the platform layer – a marketplace that handles discovery, matching, booking, and payments so that the property owner doesn’t have to manage the process manually. The operational burden drops significantly. The income doesn’t.

Why Renters Are Choosing Leeveit Over Traditional Storage Facilities

If you’ve ever needed extra storage, you know the drill. You search online, find a self-storage facility on the edge of the city, and end up paying for a unit you’ll rarely see in person because driving there takes thirty minutes you don’t have.

That’s the default most people accept, simply because it’s the option that’s always existed. But it isn’t necessarily the best one.

Start with location. Traditional self-storage facilities are usually built on large, centralized lots – which often means industrial zones or city outskirts, far from where people actually live. A Leeveit space, by contrast, is often just down the street. It might be a storage room in the condo building next to yours, or a spare unit in a neighborhood you already pass through every day. For something you might need to access on a Tuesday night or a Sunday morning, the difference between five minutes away and thirty isn’t minor. It’s the difference between actually using your storage and forgetting what’s in it.

Flexibility matters just as much. Traditional facilities tend to sell storage in fixed unit sizes – you’re choosing between a 5×5 or a 10×10, whether or not that actually matches what you’re storing. Leeveit’s spaces are inherently varied: a parking slot for a car you’re not driving this season, a room sized for a few boxes, a larger commercial space for inventory overflow. You’re not paying for space you don’t need just because it’s the next size up on a price list.

There’s also something simpler at play choice. On Leeveit, you’re not limited to whatever facility happens to be nearest. You’re comparing real options, in real neighborhoods, based on what actually fits your situation, instead of settling for the only storage company that built a warehouse near you.

None of this means traditional storage facilities don’t have their place. For some needs, especially climate-sensitive, long-term industrial storage, they still make sense. But for the everyday renter looking for something nearby, flexible, and fairly priced, the calculation increasingly favors a different kind of space – one that was already there, waiting to be used.

Who This Opportunity Is Really For

It’s worth being specific, because this isn’t a one-size-fits-all story.

• Condo owners with unused storage units or parking slots – this is passive income with almost no management overhead.
• Warehouse and commercial property owners with partially occupied buildings – flexible leasing on underutilized sections can meaningfully improve your overall yield without disrupting existing tenants.
• SMEs and growing businesses that own more space than they currently need – your excess capacity is someone else’s perfect solution.
• Building administrators and property managers looking to improve occupancy metrics and generate additional revenue streams.
• Online sellers and small businesses on the other side – if you’re paying for more space than you need, or storing inventory in places that aren’t working, flexible storage is worth understanding.

The common thread is simple: anyone sitting on space that isn’t earning, or anyone needing space without wanting a long-term commitment, is exactly who this market is being built for.

What Smart Property Owners Are Doing Differently

The property owners navigating this market well share a few common traits.

They’ve stopped treating underutilized space as a temporary problem waiting for the right long-term tenant. Instead, they’re treating it as an active asset that is something to be optimized now, not eventually.

They’re thinking in smaller increments. Rather than waiting for a single tenant to take an entire floor, they’re disaggregating the space listing individual storage units, individual parking slots, individual sections and letting the market fill them piece by piece. The aggregate income often surprises them.

They’re also paying attention to where demand is actually coming from. The growth in e-commerce in the Philippines isn’t slowing down. The number of online sellers needing last-mile storage, the number of small brands needing flexible warehouse space, the number of individuals needing accessible personal storage all of these are trending in one direction.

Smart property owners are positioning themselves on the right side of that trend rather than waiting for the traditional market to recover on its own timeline.

How Leeveit Fits Into This Picture

This is exactly the problem Leeveit was built to solve.

“We help property owners monetize underutilized spaces with zero headaches,” says Joey Consenheim, Leeveit’s Founder and CEO, “and help renters find the right space with flexible terms and total convenience.”

As Joey shared during his appearance on ABS-CBN’s Market Edge, the opportunity isn’t theoretical. Demand for storage and parking has remained resilient even as broader real estate faces pressure. The properties performing best right now aren’t necessarily the largest or the most prestigious – they’re the ones being used most efficiently.

Leeveit operates as the marketplace layer that makes this possible – connecting property owners who have space with renters who need it, on terms that work for both sides. The platform handles discovery, booking, and payments, which means property owners can start generating income from idle space without taking on the operational complexity of managing it themselves.

It’s a straightforward value exchange. But in a market where traditional real estate strategies are under pressure, straightforward and effective is exactly what’s needed.

The Question Isn’t Whether the Opportunity Is Real

The Philippine property market is going through a genuine correction. That’s not spin, it’s where things are.

But corrections don’t affect every asset class equally. And the property owners who come out of this period strongest won’t necessarily be the ones who waited for the market to recover. They’ll be the ones who found smarter ways to extract value from what they already own.

Underutilized space – whether it’s a storage room, a parking bay, a warehouse section, or a vacant commercial unit, isn’t a liability waiting for a solution. It’s an asset waiting to be activated.

The demand is there. The model exists. The platform is ready.

If you own space that isn’t working as hard as it should, the question isn’t whether the opportunity is real.

It’s whether you’re going to act on it.